Power up PowerPoint!

Show off your slides…

Everybody knows that PowerPoint is great at putting together slideshows to create an array of presentations to inform your audience. Whether you create plain and simple presentations by simply adding in your content, or if you create visual spectacles, there are still tools that you may not be aware of in PowerPoint that are secretly at your disposal.

There is an ongoing shift between creating content for presentations as well as how are you presenting. This includes content to speaking balance, how your dialect, speech and body language is used. The focus is now on how you deliver and present your content, rather than the content itself, as many creators already have a grasp on their information already and simply wield PowerPoint in a way to export that content in a visual medium for others.

A handful of new tools are worth highlighting as they help give you the edge when it comes to deploying your presentations. PowerPoint is already full of utilities and tools to help manage and create slideshows but the new additions below add an extra element to your informatic creations.

There are some tools being released in the coming months that will provide an extra dimension to help improve your slideshows. Presenter Coach allows you to rehearse your presentation, looking out for any speech patterns or mistakes that could be improved. Things like talking too fast or saying “um” a lot are just some of the areas that Presenter Coach looks out for. Upon finishing your rehearsal, Presenter Coach will provide a dashboard with potential pitfalls and ways to improve your presentation on a wide variety of aspects as previously mentioned. You can also download a report on how well your rehearsal went, which gives you a reference point. This is an excellent tool that focuses on the delivery of your presentation rather than the content, an area that is often overlooked despite being crucial.

Auto generated subtitles are another welcome addition to the online version of PowerPoint. As you speak, subtitles will appear on your screen so the audience can follow along. This is great if you haven’t got any pre-made subtitles or the room you’re speaking in is tricky for the audience to hear you. Do bear in mind that as these are auto generated, they may not always be super accurate, but as tools like these go, they are quite reliable.

Tools such as transitions and animations, as well as rehearsed timings can be combined to automate the majority of your presentation, giving you free reign to take the directive on your slides.

Whilst the PowerPoint templates are adequate in providing you with a skeleton structure on which to add your content on, Design Ideas collates these tools into a useful piece of artificial intelligence that will provide you with functional additions and amendments to your slides, setting your presentation apart from the collection of bland presentations that often stagnate their audience. Design Ideas will scan your slide content to provide recommendations. One example is when you type in the title heading text box. Upon doing so, Design Ideas will take that text and provide a slide design that is based on the text. For example, if your slide is about aeroplanes, Design Ideas will suggest an aeroplane themed slide, complete with high resolution imagery that can be used commercially. Additionally, if you use large figures in your presentation, the Designer tool will attempt to dilute them into more understandable figures. In another aeroplane example, let’s say on the slide you’d said that planes fly at 30,000 feet. The designer would then provide some alternatives to help the audience. Things like replacing 30,000 with 30k or proving an analogy (such as 30,000 ft being about the size of mount Everest). This is all done automatically for you using Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence to save you time when it comes to designing and deploying your content. Think of all the time you could save that would normally be spent painstakingly putting together a slide deck that isn’t overly appealing in terms of design or content, when PowerPoint can wave its magic wand and do the legwork for you. Compounded over time, you’ll have plenty of extra minutes to reinvest elsewhere, whilst still maintaining an excellent level of quality regarding your slide decks.

Saving your presentation in numerous formats is also a sure-fire way to increase engagement, giving your audience the scalability and flexibility to consume your content in a variety of ways. With options such as PDF export for creating guides or accompanying notes, through to exporting as full on 4k high quality video. there are plenty of choices here. PowerPoints existing toolset is already robust and so having these exciting new offerings come to the fray only improves things further.

If you or your staff would like to learn more about PowerPoint, why not book onto one of PowerPoint workshops? Our Learning Zone is a great environment to hone your skills. Contact us on 01843 572600 to find out more.

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

disable

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.